Chuck Sweeny: Hillary-Barack feud’ overhyped by media pack

Chuck Sweeny

Tuesday

Aug 26, 2008 at 12:01 AMAug 26, 2008 at 3:35 AM

I wondered how much of the “disgruntled Hillary supporters” story being hyped in the news is real and how much is made up by pack journalists who have to fill 24 hours of cable TV “news” shows with manufactured controversies they can call “BREAKING NEWS!!!!!!!

I wondered how much of the “disgruntled Hillary supporters” story being hyped in the news is real and how much is made up by pack journalists who have to fill 24 hours of cable TV “news” shows with manufactured controversies they can call “BREAKING NEWS!!!!!!!

I phoned Barb Giolitto, a Hillary Clinton delegate from Rockford, who’s in Denver for her first Democratic Convention. Giolitto thinks the media are milking the “Hillary versus Barack” story.

“I was a very dedicated Hillary delegate, I have followed her career since 1992 when I met her at a rally for (then congressman) John Cox in Rockford,” Giolitto said Monday morning as she exited an Illinois delegation caucus meeting. Giolitto, a state representative in the early 1990s, said she was excited at the prospect of Hillary becoming the first woman president, but she’s not angry that Obama narrowly won the primary contests. She’s focused solely on defeating Republican John McCain.

“Yesterday in the mall my husband and I bought a pin that has both Hillary and Barack’s pictures on it, and it says United We Stand. Today, I got a compliment from Mary Tuite, an Obama supporter, for wearing it. And that’s my point. We are united. The whole idea is to win the presidency. And I was so angry to hear the media this morning saying there’s all this division, because I’m just not seeing that at all,” Giolitto said.

A unity lunch is scheduled Tuesday with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Michelle Obama and Hillary, Giolitto said. “It will commemorate Women’s Equality Day,” the 88th anniversary of the day the 19th Amendment to the Constitution became law and gave American women the right to vote.

Tuesday night, Hillary Clinton will be the keynote speaker at the convention, “and on Wednesday, Hillary is having a meeting where she will release her delegates and urge us to vote for Obama,” Giolitto said.

Tuite, an Obama delegate from Rockford, said Democrats are focused on November and will not let bickering left over from the primaries get in the way. She does acknowledge that some people may not vote for Obama because he is black.

“And all we can do (about that) is emphasize the policies of Obama and how they contrast to McCain’s, and hope people would be educated enough to elect a person who is going to do best for the middle class. It’s the younger generation who are going to make the decision. This is a campaign to save the middle class, because the policies of the last eight years have not addressed their needs,” Tuite said.

State Rep. Chuck Jefferson, D-Rockford, has a different take on who may deliver the winning margin for Obama on Nov. 4. The Obama delegate, who said in an earlier column that he never thought a fellow black man would win a major party nomination, believes that older black people will stream to the polls in record numbers to vote for Obama.

“Folks who have not voted in 20, 30 years, especially older African-Americans, now see a reason to go to the polls,” said Jefferson. “They know it’s not the status quo, and I hear it in the churches, the barbershops, in the circles I travel. The young kids, some of them will get out there to vote; others don’t pay attention.”